A rag-tag post
I posted The Art of Getting Along, a Sky High, Warren-centric ficlet about friendship yesterday. It was inspired by the prompt ‘Any fandom, getting along with someone in your friend group that you don't particularly like.’ I say ‘inspired by’ because I don’t think it’s a fill, exactly, and when I last edited it, I had to admit the first paragraph had gone off on a ‘making friends’ tangent, instead of being a friend. But the whole point is Warren having an unreliable perspective on this business of friendship. I enjoyed playing on Warren’s sense of superiority because he’s like a year older than the rest. My shipping biases are probably showing. And I forgot to check how to spell Zach’s name and had to do some hasty editing after posting. First drafted last week when I saw the prompt, edited about three or four times subsequently.
Traitors 1/8
2019 has been a wasteland of TV dramas I wanted to watch so far, so I perked up when I heard about this: a spy show set in post-war London. Now, I’ve seen it, I’m less enthused. All the tilted camerawork (to reflect the state of the world, and to suggest that this is edgier than your usual period espionage fare, which it isn’t) couldn’t disguise the so-so script - let’s boil things down and handwave others for conflict!
Even more of a problem for me was that I wasn’t invested in most of the main characters. Seriously, I spent most of the second half wondering what Keely Hawes’s character was doing, introduced as the only (lady) civil servant who understood neutrality and professional in the terrible job interview. I mean, this obviously means she is some kind of spy (Spooks’s Zoe’s granny?) And then, when she did turn up doing paperwork in a montage that I suppose was meant to be meaningful, I grumbled too.
But honestly, Hawes is the most hard-working actress in British prestige TV drama right now.
Our protagonist is posh Fiona (Emma Appleby), who I suppose is meant to come off as naïve, privileged, spoilt and reckless (i.e. great fodder to be an asset). But the more male characters told her and us the audience that she was intelligent, the more I snorted. Just because she knows what ‘egregious’ means doesn’t make her intelligent.
Guest American Star Actor Michael Stulbarg played a shouty early reds under the bed proponent, who was willing to kill to create his war. (I’ve been changing my mind about how the show spoke to today - though I will concede the point that he’s one of the traitors too, not just agents like Fiona, turning on her country for a ‘friendly’ (Anglo-American relations being quite prickly in this show).
Luke Treadway played a likeable new Labour MP, who tried to stand up to posh Fiona, and indeed did, but you can see the character’s arc plotted out before you, and Treadway’s performance is almost begging at the camera to give him better material.
I doubt that we’ll ever find out who killed Stephen Campbell-Moore’s traitor at the top of the show. And Jackson, the African-American driver who hung around like Banquo’s ghost, mainly because he was suffering an unexplained mental breakdown when we first saw him - is he going to do something?
The thing about The Little Drummer Girl, Mrs Wilson, Bodyguard and the folie a deux of Killing Eve is that I sympathised with the main characters. And the first two shows on that list did feature two naifs living in a bubble. So, I’m dubious about continuing to watch it.
I intended to continue last week’s ‘space’ theme for Music Monday, and link to Blur’s Far Out, but I can’t find the album version, which is my favourite. Bah.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/371353.html.
Traitors 1/8
2019 has been a wasteland of TV dramas I wanted to watch so far, so I perked up when I heard about this: a spy show set in post-war London. Now, I’ve seen it, I’m less enthused. All the tilted camerawork (to reflect the state of the world, and to suggest that this is edgier than your usual period espionage fare, which it isn’t) couldn’t disguise the so-so script - let’s boil things down and handwave others for conflict!
Even more of a problem for me was that I wasn’t invested in most of the main characters. Seriously, I spent most of the second half wondering what Keely Hawes’s character was doing, introduced as the only (lady) civil servant who understood neutrality and professional in the terrible job interview. I mean, this obviously means she is some kind of spy (Spooks’s Zoe’s granny?) And then, when she did turn up doing paperwork in a montage that I suppose was meant to be meaningful, I grumbled too.
But honestly, Hawes is the most hard-working actress in British prestige TV drama right now.
Our protagonist is posh Fiona (Emma Appleby), who I suppose is meant to come off as naïve, privileged, spoilt and reckless (i.e. great fodder to be an asset). But the more male characters told her and us the audience that she was intelligent, the more I snorted. Just because she knows what ‘egregious’ means doesn’t make her intelligent.
Guest American Star Actor Michael Stulbarg played a shouty early reds under the bed proponent, who was willing to kill to create his war. (I’ve been changing my mind about how the show spoke to today - though I will concede the point that he’s one of the traitors too, not just agents like Fiona, turning on her country for a ‘friendly’ (Anglo-American relations being quite prickly in this show).
Luke Treadway played a likeable new Labour MP, who tried to stand up to posh Fiona, and indeed did, but you can see the character’s arc plotted out before you, and Treadway’s performance is almost begging at the camera to give him better material.
I doubt that we’ll ever find out who killed Stephen Campbell-Moore’s traitor at the top of the show. And Jackson, the African-American driver who hung around like Banquo’s ghost, mainly because he was suffering an unexplained mental breakdown when we first saw him - is he going to do something?
The thing about The Little Drummer Girl, Mrs Wilson, Bodyguard and the folie a deux of Killing Eve is that I sympathised with the main characters. And the first two shows on that list did feature two naifs living in a bubble. So, I’m dubious about continuing to watch it.
I intended to continue last week’s ‘space’ theme for Music Monday, and link to Blur’s Far Out, but I can’t find the album version, which is my favourite. Bah.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/371353.html.